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An influential eight-part made-for-TV documentary film on China titled
China: The Roots of Madness was produced in the United States in 1967.^13 The
central theme was that a hundred years of national tragedy had taught the
Chinese people to hate, and that this hate constituted the greatest threat to
peace in the world today. To many people in the world, China had descended
into national insanity—while armed with nuclear bombs and fostering armed
insurrection across Southeast Asia.
The Burning of the British Mission
The most savage Red Guard violence was directed against the British mis-
sion. In May 1967, workers at a plastic-flower factory in Hong Kong went on
strike. The Hong Kong Communist Party organization became involved in
the strike, and the strikers adopted increasingly militant tactics. Hong Kong
police thereupon arrested several militants and seventeen Chinese journal-
ists, including several from the PRC, who had been inciting violence with
inflammatory articles. The Hong Kong government also shut two procom-
munist newspapers and initiated lawsuits against several others. The MFA in
Beijing thereupon called in the British chargé d’affaires and demanded that
Britain accept the demands of the strikers, release all those arrested, punish
those responsible for the “atrocities,” and rescind its newspaper closures—all
within forty-eight hours. Otherwise, the British government would bear full
responsibility for the consequences.
Huge crowds of a million or so people over the course of several days
began besieging the British mission. The Reuters correspondent in Beijing,
one of only four Western journalists still stationed in Beijing, was put under
house arrest. On August 22, people in the British mission noticed that the
crowd outside the British mission was different: they were quiet and sat in
neat rows. By chance, the chargé d’affaires, Sir Donald Hopson, a veteran of
the 1944 Normandy invasion, happened to be watching and saw the crowd
rise in unison and surge forward. Other observers saw a military flare signal
the advance. Fire trucks were seen parked nearby, and members of the invad-
ing mob were seen carrying oil drums toward the targeted building. In other
words, the invasion was planned and organized.
Inside the mission, the twenty-three British personnel quickly retreated
to a prepared safe room. The Chinese mob forced their way into the build-
ing. Some proceeded to systematically search the facilities, finding and tak-
ing away the cipher encryption machine. Others set the building ablaze,
at which point the British personnel exited their safe room out of fear of
being burned alive. The now hysterical Chinese mob shouted “sha, sha, sha,”
“kill, kill, kill,” which the Chinese-speakers in the group understood and
knew was a chant of the Boxers who had massacred foreigners in 1899. Some